


Middle-Shelf

by kaianieves



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Fandom Trumps Hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21644791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaianieves/pseuds/kaianieves
Summary: Women in denial. Wow, what a term. So vague. Women in denial about what? Their entire lives, maybe. Probably. Realizing that you could even, maybe, like other women puts things in a whole new perspective. It makes a lot of things in your life seem worthless, and absolutely shreds hindsight to pieces.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	Middle-Shelf

“And we’re back with Jennie Castle on her new album, ‘Live And Learn’. Jennie, how did you come up with the title track ‘A Song for Grace’?”

Trish didn’t want to be here. If there was anything she was sure of right now, it’s that she didn’t want to be sitting here, in this booth, interviewing this pop star. And it wasn’t the pop star’s fault- not exactly. Jennie Castle was just living her life, taking spots on morning cable programs and radio shows to promote her newfound fame.

Really, it was all the pop stars. All the comedians, the self help gurus and pseudo-health experts. Her producer, her manager, her  _ mother  _ especially. Sitting down in the Trish Talk booth now every morning felt like Trish resigning herself to death. This was  _ not _ what she wanted to do.

But on the flip side, Trish Walker didn’t exactly know what she  _ wanted _ to do either.

Recently, Trish had felt sort of… empty. She didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want to be home. Perhaps a suitor would help fill the void, temporarily. But that was also part of the problem. She didn’t want to go to a bar, sit there for an hour, getting ogled by men. She didn’t want to deal with the same, obvious questions. 

Trish had looked at Jennie when she first came in that morning. Not just a glance, but really  _ looked  _ while she sat in her chair in the recording booth. Jennie Castle was attractive, which was definitely part of why she was so successful. Her hair was chestnut and she smelled like sweet oranges- almost too sweet, like citrus under a heat lamp. Her eyes were clear and blue as swimming pools.

Trish had been looking at other women like this, too. Walking down the streets of New York, taking the train, on her morning runs. At work, no, because that was unproffesional. Because someone might notice. Someone might tell.

Sometimes Trish wondered if Jess had these thoughts- worried about these things.

“I think, I wanted it to be a dedication to my mother. To the woman she was, y’know? Strong, smart- emboldened against authority and against anyone who told her no or got in the way of her dreams. She was a strong woman, but she had her soft sides. I can’t tell you how many times I’d seen my mother cry.”

Funny. Trish had never seen her mother cry. Behind that steely mask of makeup and money, she wasn’t even sure there was a soul.

“The tones on the song are melodic and really… angelic. But then in the chorus they drop and get harsher. The whole album seems to waiver between that dynamic,” Trish said.

“Yeah! And I really think that Michael Mulroney, my producer…” Trish spaced out.

What would her producer think when she quit? Wait-  _ if. _ Because TrishTalk was her life, and her passion. Or maybe it just was. TrishTalk left in the past, being dragged along with her into the future, clawing at her decaying celebrity skeleton.

“What do you think? Trish?” Jennie asked.

Shit. Saying pardon on live air would be a killer for sure. What had she said? Trish had only caught bits and pieces.

“Oh, um- I think that Mulroney definitely did do a great job with you comparing and contrasting the narratives of each song. It’s like an emotional roller coaster within ten tracks, you know?”

Jennie nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

She got the signal to wrap it up, and so Trish did, leaning into her microphone and watching Jennie Castle out of the corner of her eye as the star examined her manicure. She gave Trish a hug before she left, thanking her politely for being a great host. The orange smell stung her nose, staying there until she finally left the high rise building in favour for her lonely apartment.

It was late. Too late to be going out, probably. This wasn’t something the Trish Walker New York knew and loved would do. Then again, she’d stopped feeling like that Trish long ago. This wasn’t her, but it wasn’t bad. It didn’t feel bad, anyway.

A bar. She’d just been walking, walking, walking and now she stood in front of a bar. She had never heard of it before, never seen it before. The neon sign flashing ‘Cherry’s’ should have given it away, but for some reason, Trish reached for the door.

The inside was pink- very pink. Lights bounced off the walls, casting all the faces in muted magenta light. Pop music was playing, people were chatting. It was a bar alright. Trish sat down on a vacant stool, tapping the clear chrome counter with her fingernail.

The bartender came around, black towel over her shoulder. Her hair was curly, up in a bun, eyes dark under the lights. Snake bites framed the right side of her bottom lip, septum piercing glinting.

“What can I get you?” she asked.

“Cherry coke and vodka,” Trish said. It wasn’t her usual bar order. Trish hadn’t been to a bar in a while, but when she used to frequent them she always got a bourbon.  _ Used to, used to, used to.  _ She could feel the words clawing at the bones in her throat.

The bartender stood in front of her, crouching down for a moment to grab a bottle of soda. Then she popped up again, turning and grabbing a mid-shelf bottle of clear liquid.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said.

“I guess you could say that I’m new in town.” Trish laughed at the notion.

The bartender didn’t question it though, nodding. She set Trish’s drink down in front of her, which Trish picked up. It tasted sour, but not bad. New. A new taste.

The bartender disappeared to the other side of the bar, serving another woman who had her head ducked close to another woman’s ear moments later. In fact, Trish noticed as she looked around, there seemed to only be women in this bar. The gears started turning, if a little stuck because of cherry coke.

“So what brought you in?” she, bartender of this seemingly woman-only establishment, was standing in front of Trish twenty minutes and another cherry coke and vodka later. Trish tilted her head to the side, universal sign of confusion. “Bad boyfriend… ex-husband? Let me guess- he’s getting the kids.”

“I am childless, actually,” Trish said, taking a sip from her sweating glass. “And husbandless. I don’t go out to drink that often.”

“You’re just a shut in, then?”

Trish laughed, dry and strained. “I guess,” she agreed.

“Well I’m Jill- not a shut in, and it was the sex,” the bartender said.

Trish almost choked on ice. “What?”

“The sex, it’s what made me realize. It’s not supposed to be  _ that  _ horrible, and I- thankfully- figured that out pretty quickly.”

“I’m sorry,” Trish said. “I think we’re having two very different conversations.”

The bartender-  _ Jill’s  _ lip twitched into a smile, a crooked one, probably to accommodate for the lip piercings. “So bad sex  _ is  _ the reason you walked into a lesbian bar for the first time tonight?” she asked.

Something clicked, the gears stopped turning, and a light went off in Trish’s head. She quickly scanned the room again. Now it all made sense.

“I didn’t know it was a lesbian bar,” Trish said, a little too quickly. “Not that- it’s just. I’m not gay.”

Jill seemed to find that very amusing. She continued drying the cocktail mixer she’d just made a woman’s Tequila Sunrise in. “Well there’s a reason you walked in here tonight…”

She was waiting for Trish’s name. Trish Walker. And the funny thing, actually funny, was that Trish almost said it. But something knocked her in the skull, another name tumbling out.

“Jessica.”

“Well, Jessica,” Jill said. “There’s usually only one reason why people come in here, whether they mean to or not. Maybe it’s a sign… or something.”

_ Maybe it is,  _ Trish thought.

Trish went home that night tipsy and questioning. Questioning  _ everything.  _ Apparently she just needed a few drinks to actually consider huge leaps in her life instead of swallowing them down. It was like the alcohol soothed the clawing. Like imbibing mid-shelf liquor suddenly made the world so much easier, the gears in her brain less rusted by words like  _ career  _ and  _ commitment  _ and  _ reputation. _

She wondered what would happen if she talked to that bartender more. Then Trish realized that, really, she wouldn’t know how to talk to her. Flirt with her, or anyone in that bar. Was flirting with men so different from flirting with women? It seemed like it’d be. And when was the last time she’d even flirted with a man? Ages. It had been ages, for sure.

At work, she was distracted. Trish didn’t want to be there, but it was different now. She wanted to be somewhere else for once. The swallowing need to disappear didn’t come, the gravitational pull of that bar in its place.

It was hard to find when she tried to go back a week later. Wandering the cold streets, watching hot steam exit the sewer grates in the asphalt, the thought that the bar hadn’t existed in the first place drifted through Trish’s mind. That she was just playing herself, that this was a sign. But then there it was, and here she was, standing right in front of it under the pink light’s reflection down on the ground.

Walking in felt less like a hazy experience, too. It felt like wading into a cold swimming pool, whatever coma she had been in left at the door. It was loud, the music bass boosted. More bodies were moving and dancing tonight than the last. More drinks seemed to flow and spill. The bar seemed busier, stool seats almost all taken,

Then a woman in a dark leather jacket wrapped her arm around the waist of a blonde in a yellow glittery dress, and a seat freed up. Trish sat down, still uncomfortably warm from it’s previous patron. It didn’t matter, though, because there she was again- Jill. If Jessica could have seen her, she definitely would have called Trish pathetic.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you around here again,” the bartender said, approaching.

“I wasn’t expecting it either,” Trish said.

Jill lauged. “What can I get you?”

“Bourbon. On the rocks.” A different drink tonight. In the passing week Trish had started to feel like a different person. A better person.

Jill made her her drink, setting it down in front of her. It tasted bad, but Trish figured she would get used to it. Wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever put into her body, that she could be sure of.

When drink traffic slowed, Jill started to linger near Trish’s end of the bar. “A week,” she eventually said.

“What?” Trish asked over the music.

“It usually takes longer or shorter- much shorter. They usually come back the next night, or two years later, or never again. But you came back in a week,” Jill said.

_ They.  _ Who would that be? Women in denial. Wow, what a term. So vague. Women in denial about what? Their entire lives, maybe. Probably. Realizing that you could even, maybe, like other women puts things in a whole new perspective. It makes a lot of things in your life seem worthless, and absolutely shreds hindsight to pieces.

But it clarifies things, too. Misty feelings that you could never quite categorize because,  _ hey, I’ve got a boyfriend.  _ Or a woman that you were drawn to, because for some reason she stuck out from all the other women around and it seemed like everyone noticed, but in a bad way compared to you. Because you were just observing, not judging, because you weren’t aware of what exactly everyone was supposed to immediately judge.

Now Trish knew. “I did,” she said. “Work’s got me tied down everyday, so.”

“Anything else got you tied down?”

The bourbon in Trish’s mouth briefly greeted her airway. She cleared her throat, trying not to choke.

“I guess this means I’ve got a new regular,” Jill said, definitely a statement rather than an inference. “See you around, Jessica.”

She should’ve called Jess. If not for advice, then just someone to  _ tell.  _ Because she might have made a bit of a comment, but it wouldn’t have fazed her too much. Because it was Jess, and nothing fazed her too much ever. Trish knew this by now.

But she couldn’t. Couldn’t bring herself to, motivate herself, scare herself into doing it. It felt like she would explode if she didn’t express this newfound secret to  _ someone  _ and yet she almost thought she liked it that way. Trish liked the feeling, having something so fragile and personal. It made her a new person, a different person from the Trish Walker storming the weekday morning airways. And that made her feel better. About everything.

Yet, as soon as she got back into that recording booth Monday morning, it was like nothing had changed. She was still miserable.

Laid out before her was a list of bullet points, the topics of discussion Trish was supposed to go over this morning. They were eye-roll worthy, especially the after-break interview with Lila Yale, known gluten conspiracist. 

The red light turned on at the top of the door frame, signalling that she was live. It was like it was a signal for the dread welling up inside her, too, stomach dropping like an elevator falling from the penthouse floor. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to do  _ this  _ every day. Trish never wanted to do this again.

In that moment, she made a decision.

“Hi, my name’s Trish Walker, and you’re listening to TrishTalk.” Her producer gave her a thumbs up from the recording booth. “Now, this morning I’m supposed to be talking to you listeners about the homelessness epidemic in New York, and I’m supposed to answer your calls and listen to your opinions. But I don’t particularly feel like doing that. In fact, I dread doing it, and I have for a long time now. And I know for a fact that almost every other radio host on this station and stations far and wide feels the same way. Because it’s all bullshit, and deep down I feel like we all know this.”

Trish turned her head, watching her producer stand up and make hand signals through the booth window. She ignored them.

“The truth is, none of this matters. It doesn’t, really. This show is bullshit. What comes out of my mouth aren’t even my ideas, they never really were. I’m staring at a list of bullet points to go over, ridiculous interviews that you nor I really care about to conduct. Why do people even listen to this show, really? Because it’s been around so long, it’s commonplace now? Does it make you feel better? ‘Cause frankly, it makes me feel like shit. Like this weight is on my chest, like I can’t live the life that I want to because of this damn radio show. It’s a shackle, it feels like a burden.” She paused for a moment, looking at the call buttons light up in the window’s reflection.

“And I’m done being burdened. I quit.”

Trish couldn’t have rushed out of the room faster. With every step, it felt like she was gaining more momentum even if she was just walking. Moving towards  _ something  _ instead of being stuck in a claustrophobic room doing nothing.

Standing outside of the tall building, the wind wipped. It was freezing, Trish’s filling with ice cold air. She held her breath, savouring it. For too long, she’d been wrapped in uncomfortable warmth, under a sweltering blaze. Being out in the cold had never felt so good. But she couldn’t just stand there, on the corner forever. Trish needed to go somewhere; she knew exactly where.

It was midday by the time she was standing close to the front steps. Peering through the commercial glass doors, the dull sunlight made it hard to see inside. Trish could tell that the light were off. Cherry’s’ flashing sign wasn’t on either, a foggy white instead of a brilliant pink.

When she tried the door, though, it opened. The bar smelled less like alcohol and more like sweat during the day. No one seemed to be in the building, which was confusing.

She walked around slowly, trying to get a glimpse in the back room doorway, which was propped open by a brick, clearly a makeshift door stopper. A rush of cold air and the clinking of bottles made Trish turn around.

Jill stood at the door, coat zipped up to her chin with a box of full vodka bottles in her arms. “I didn’t know we were open,” she said.

She crossed the room, walking behind the bar with the box and disappearing through the door to the back.

“I’m actually here to see you,” Trish said. For a moment, she didn’t know if Jill had heard her. Then the other woman returned to the front of the bar, her face a little less casual than before.

“Really?”

“I didn’t know how else to find you,” Trish said.

Jill let out a breathy laugh.

“I just quit my job.”

“What?” Jill asked.

“I just quit my job,” Trish said again. “I’m a- I  _ was  _ a radio host. TrishTalk. You may have heard of it.”

“I knew you sounded familiar. Yeah, once or twice. I kind of like it,” Jill said.

“I didn’t.”

“Clearly.” She started wiping down the bar. “So does that mean you’ll be coming in less, then? Or have you taken up a new job as a day drinker?”

“Surprisingly, neither,” Trish said, relaxing more. “But I did plan on asking you out for one- a drink. Sometime soon?”

“So you did this all for me, then, huh?” Jill asked. An amused smile danced on her face.

“For me,” Trish said. “But you played your part.”

They were both silent for a long moment. It felt like Trish was teetering on the edge- not quite falling, but too far gone to back up to safety.

Jill made the first move, turning and grabbing two clean glasses from the rack behind her. She set them down, then grabbed a bottle of top shelf bourbon. She poured some into both glasses.

“I’ll take you up on that drink, then,” Jill said. She raised one of the glasses, taking a sip and looking at Trish over the rim.

“I’d like that,” Trish said. She took the other glass, taking a sip. It didn’t taste so bad this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this fic! It was quite a labour, one that took me the entire time allotted to write it because of a ridiculous schedule and some mild procrastination. I want to thank Tilted Syllogism so much for giving me all the patience in the world! I am so sorry that this took so very long, but I hope you like it and it fits to what you wanted. And thank you for donating, it means the world that my little fanfic did some good in the world by barter proxy.


End file.
